Educating European Lawyers

The continuing and accelerating process of European integration impacts on European legal education, or ought to have its impact on our ideas about legal education in Europe. Although legal education in Europe is mainly national and usually conducted in the national language, there are initiatives that seek to break through the national barriers and move towards a truly European legal education. The Maastricht European Law School, which focuses on European Union law, international law and comparative law, fully taught in English, is one of these initiatives. In this edited volume we have endeavoured to reflect upon European Legal education in the light of that program, which has been on offer for a couple of years now and which attracts a great deal of students from all over Europe and the world as well, and to offer to interested readers ways forward as well as obstacles and points to ponder.

This books pays attention to the developments in European law and the effects these have on legal education in general as well as in other fields. Drawing from their own experiences, the authors describe the current state of law, offer perspectives on future developments and explain how they translate these developments in the law school curriculum. All the contributions in this book have in common that each author seeks to better prepare students for a future in a more integrated Europe.

It is our purpose to generate a European debate about the subject and to move the European discussion forward to concrete steps to effectively establish European legal education for new generations of lawyers that will work in an increasingly Europeanised legal domain.


About the book
‘[Educating European Lawyers] provides invaluable insights into the experience of almost two decades of Europeanization and Internationalization of legal education. Given that many other universities feel the aspiration or pressure to Europeanize and internationalize their schools, their staff, their curricula and their academic output, the book offers a rich fund of information on the progress, the obstacles and the downsides that the faculty of law in Maastricht has been facing during the past 20 years. It may become mandatory reading for all those interested in advancing the discussion on European legal education and in particular for other law faculties that wish to follow this path in one way or another.’
Constanze Semmelmann on www.mepli.eu (20 june 2012)